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Monday, February 1, 2016

Weekly Challenge: Landscape, Black and White

This week's challenge from Dogwood Photography is "Landscape: Black and White--Look for a scene with great contrast that will make a great black and white."

Last week's enormous snow storm provided lots of high-contrast material. This morning I took a walk in our local park and tried to think in b&w. I took a lot of shots in the woods, where long shadows were falling on snow and branches stuck up everywhere. There were some nice woodpiles emerging from the snow too. Sucker that I am for textures, I shot plenty of those:

Woodpile

But my favorite is this image of geese on the partially frozen surface of the pond. I fooled around with Lightroom's B&W Presets: they are a quick way to look at variations on your image, and you can start with one and then tweak it further. I ended up using my own settings but they are pretty similar to the LR B&W Look 2 preset.

Geese on Ice

Other observations: I haven't figured out how to keep my hands warm in cold weather. Mittens and gloves don't allow working the camera, so I end up sticking my hands in my pockets and blowing on them. The Nikon D750 seems not to mind the cold at all.